Getting together

Confronting a drought, the two prinicipal water-delivery networks in  the state will consolidate operations -- at least for a while.

From Capitol Weekly's John Howard: "California’s two behemoth water deliverers — the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, perhaps the best known water purveyors in the world –  are poised to join together to move water quickly around the state in the face of an unprecedented drought."

"Gov. Brown’s decision to ask Californians to voluntarily reduce their water consumption by 20 percent received support, especially among those with long memories: In the historic drought of 1977, California had 22 million people. This year, it has at least 38 million."

“The big picture here the governor is calling for conservation,” said Ron Stork of the Friends of the River. “That’s not only a good thing, but an essential thing. Some conservation will be required, and when you conserve, you are building more reliability into your supply.”

Being unemployed is bad enough, but compounding the agony is the inability of jobless workers to connect with officials to assure a flow of benefits.

From the LAT's Marc Lifsher: "On any given day in recent months, as many as 90% of callers to the Employment Development Department seeking information about missed payments or unprocessed claims failed to reach a live worker, according to agency phone records obtained by The Times."

"Callers who don't get through to staff are routed to a recorded voice directing them to seek answers on the EDD website or get help through an automated self-service phone number — options that many unemployed workers have already tried in vain..."

"The near-collapse of customer service is just the latest headache for the EDD, which has been struggling with the fallout from a disastrous launch of an upgraded computer system over Labor Day weekend. A software glitch delayed payments to about 150,000 Californians, forcing the agency to revert to processing some claims by hand."

When the Brown administration pushed through the dismantling of redevelopment in 2011, that seemed to be the end of a bruising fight. In fact, legally, it was just beginning.

From the Bee's Jim Miller: "The complex legal fights underscore that, two years after the California Supreme Court upheld the main state law eliminating redevelopment, the dissolution process is as contentious as ever. Some cases are destined for appellate courts or higher. Local governments, meanwhile, continue to invoke Proposition 22, the November 2010 initiative that enshrined local revenue protections in the state constitution but failed to prevent redevelopment’s elimination."

“It’s not every day that you shut down a $5 billion industry overnight, an industry that has tens of thousands of existing contracts,” said Brent Hawkins, a municipal law attorney who has worked on some of the cases. Adding to the turmoil, he said, is that the legislation eliminating redevelopment “was poorly conceived and poorly drafted.”

In the complex, contentious fight over public pension reform, the protections afforded military veterans are less than those provided government workers.

From Calpensions' Ed Mendel: "Why can the pensions of veterans who put their lives on the line during military duty for the nation be cut, while the pensions of everyday state and local government workers in California are legally protected from cuts?"

"The answer is that case law developed by California judges over decades means the pension promised on the date of hire becomes a contract, a “vested right” that cannot be cut unless offset by a new benefit of comparable value."

"Military pensions lack this court protection, and so does the general federal retirement plan, Social Security. Both can be cut. The protection California courts have given state and local government pensions is exceptional."

Although state schools are poised to receive an infusion of new money, the Board of education may not craft new temporary regulations targeting the funds.

From Cabinet Report's Tom Chorneau: " After a marathon hearing and a surprise visit by the governor last week, members of the California State Board of Education are not expected to make any major changes to a set of temporary regulations governing use of billions in new state money for schools during the coming year-long process to set permanent rules."

"That said, the board has directed staff to look at several parts of the program while also signaling to critics their satisfaction with pieces already in place that some had called for revising."

And finally rom our bulging "The 1960s Will Never Die" file file comes word that Ken Kesey's "Furthur" is going to be restored after sitting in an Oregon swamp for years.

"It was one of the glorious symbols of the laid-back, acid-laced '60s in Northern California. Now, half a century later, Ken Kesey's psychedelic bus, with its quixotic name "Furthur," has been rescued from an Oregon swamp and is on its way to restoration, minus the LSD that fueled its passengers so long ago."

"Furthur - the name veered occasionally to Further, but Furthur stuck - was the bus used by the Merry Pranksters, a group of 14 happy friends of Kesey's, for a cross-country trip (in more ways than one) in 1964. The goal was to visit the World's Fair in New York and, incidentally, celebrate the publication of Kesey's second novel, "Sometimes a Great Notion."

"Kesey had already scored big with his first book, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and the voyage was going to be kind of an educational journey. LSD was legal at the time, and the Pranksters set out to explain the drug's mind-expanding powers to anyone they met along the way who wanted to try it."

Start it up ...